Charles Partington
After ‘Sporting on Apteryx’ published in Volume 23, Charles Partington narrowly escaped a nasty mischief when drying himself on a hand towel. Readers of New Writings are no less fortunate in the happy outcome of that perilous encounter for they are now able to venture into further crannies of creation within Charles Partington’s brain where Storrs and lella eternally fail to meet among the constellations of the mind.
* * * *
‘I prize seeing a great deal. In the
visual image we possess life itself.’
—Goethe.
Later, Storrs had stood before the viewscreen, staring mindlessly at the exploding star.
‘Where now?’ Van Vliet had asked. ‘Earth?’
Storrs had shaken his head. ‘No. Anywhere but there.’ The expression on his face had been one of utter desolation.
‘Anywhere?’ Van Vliet had echoed.
Storrs had just nodded numbly.
* * * *
All his free time was now spent in the darkening well of the viewroom. Each visit he occupied a different chair. Upon leaving he had scored a name, always the same one, into the back of the chair in front of where he had been sitting.
Storrs had never questioned Van Vliet about their destination. Such considerations no longer interested him. The only indications he had were the increasing areas of blackness on the viewscreen.
Time passed. Storrs continued to make his almost ritualistic visits to the viewroom. And each visit saw the name added to another chair.
* * * *
The first knowledge Storrs had of the arrival of a second passenger on board the Glider came after another period of sleep tormented with dreams of Iella.
He had awoken sweating and exhausted, suddenly aware that something had happened to the ship while he slept. The intensity of his dreams, the surging despair those images of Iella had evoked, prevented Storrs from realising immediately what it was that seemed different about the Glider. He dressed and went in search of the Captain.
When Storrs located Van Vliet, he found him manipulating servo-mechanisms to place a number of crude organics into an empty hold. The material had a texture and cellular structure similar to wood, but wood grown on oddly warped trees.
Storrs watched, vaguely perturbed, realising that if the Glider was taking on cargo it must be operating at a sub-light velocity, possibly in orbit around a planetary body. He had slept through the transition which apparently had induced those traumatic recollections of Iella.
He watched the operation in silence. His interest in anything was minimal these days. The initial shock of Cin 2347’s premature nova was still with him, perhaps it always would be.
Iella had died before he had been able to reach her. His decision not to send word of his departure for Cin 2347 but to surprise her was also a cause for regret.
The delay had been of his own making. There had been more than sufficient time to make the journey. Yet he had postponed the decision time and again, hoping illogically that Iella would change her mind, even though he was aware of the depth of her feelings concerning Cin 2347.
When too little time remained Storrs had accepted the inevitable and booked passage on the Glider. Iella had died among strangers without realising that he was on his way to join her, and Storrs knew now that he would never be able to erase his guilt complex.
* * * *
Noticing him. Van Vliet nodded a terse greeting, his hands hovering briefly above the servo-mechanism controls. ‘Quar.’ he explained. ‘You may have heard of it.’
Storrs shook his head.
‘No? It’s considered an excellent substance by the Ceol. Under their hands it manifests properties unattainable by other lifeforms. But then I’m sure your fellow passenger could explain far better than I.’
The possibility of Van Vliet accepting another passenger on-board the Glider had never occurred to Storrs. Physical journeys were rarely undertaken, most lifeforms preferring to visit by proxy, exchanging personalities for prearranged periods, the delay between transmission and reception of the psyche being passed in cryosleep, a small inconvenience for the prospect of another world, the possession and sensations of another body.
During the flight, especially since the nova of Cin 2347, Storrs had evolved an understanding with Van Vliet. Conversation was restricted to necessities, each pursuing his own interests without inflicting himself on the other. The prospect of this Ceol filled Storrs with alarm. There was a blackness inside him that shunned intimacies.
* * * *
Van Vliet indicated a figure approaching along the corridor. ‘Why not introduce yourself? You should both have much to discuss. I understand that ...’ The Captain smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid his name will not suffer a translation. That Ceol is considered a great artist by his own people.’ Deliberately then, Van Vliet turned back to his servo-mechanisms.
* * * *
The number of star systems containing life within the galaxy had been estimated as being in excess of one hundred and sixty thousand, a high percentage of which had produced their own unique intelligence structures. Homo sapiens had found it relatively easy to accept the more bizarre lifeforms. Earth’s own riotous genetic display having long accustomed them to the acceptance of infinite variety. Conversely, only when intelligence approached the human form did the ancient subconscious fears surface.
The Ceol was a near copy of Homo sapiens, the minor differences assuming frightening proportions which in Storrs’ weakened and vulnerable state threatened to swamp his reasoning in a wave of emotive fear.
It was then, as the alien approached along the narrow corridor, that their eyes met. Storrs stared only briefly into those fluid expressionless orbs, but the undeniable sensation that it was reaching down into his soul and fastening upon what it found there, sent Storrs gasping for the privacy of his cabin, his ritual in the viewroom forgotten in his panic to avoid this alarming invasion of his innermost processes.
Hours later he condemned but could not overcome the irrational fear which kept him a prisoner in his cabin for the rest of that period.
* * * *
Storrs was never to lose his dread of Ceol. If anything his revulsion increased each time he came into contact with his fellow passenger.
On one occasion Storrs had been seated as usual in the viewroom, his eyes on the growing darkness he had come to realise was the edge of the galaxy, his thoughts and memories on Iella and her burning ambitions. Storrs’ own talent had never equalled hers, his mind faltering before the vision of her accomplishments. Yet she had never been satisfied.
For decades, art in all its aspects had hesitated, seemingly unsure, directionless, lacking the intellectual leaders who might have indicated the way. A condition of stasis had existed for too long. Originality was dead, buried under the outpourings of countless previous generations, a culmination of the vast legacy produced over a span of thirty-thousand years. The impact of new cultures had compounded the condition rather than stimulating it. Human artists had retreated perplexed before the incoming tidal wave of alien concepts, seeking refuge in a return to classical themes. Iella and others like her recognised the problem but so far had been unable to produce a solution. Storrs had offered what encouragement he could; but more than encouragement had been needed.
Storrs stretched in his chair, surfacing briefly from his recollections.
The viewscreen had been suddenly filled with glowing filaments of gas, nebulous spirals of interstellar material looping and whirling in response to unseen forces. Their effect upon Storrs had been hypnotic. Again he plunged into reminiscences.
Concerned with this cultural confusion, they had naturally been aware of the peremptory exodus of Earth’s prominent literary and artistic figures, and of the rumours concerning Cin 2347, for weeks before the pebbles arrived.
Inquiries about these inexplicable departures proved negative. Iella’s questions received only cautionary glances or amused smiles within those elitist circles she had been able to penetrate on the strength of her growing reputation in art. The news media were preoccupied with the current political upheavals. Official sources refused to comment. However, they did not have long to wait for the answer.
The pebbles arrived accompanied by a terse handwritten note. The signature was unmistakable and one Iella found extremely flattering. ‘Join us—please,’ the note read, ‘the pebbles will tell you all you need to know.’ Attached to the note were two one way tickets to Cin 2347’s only planet.
Looking up from the tickets, Storrs saw tears in Iella’s eyes. She was clenching her pebble very tightly between both hands. She looked as though she would never let go of it again.
Thoughtfully, Storrs had brushed his fingers over his own pebble. He had experienced nothing. The pebble was dead. Or he was.
* * * *
Iella had her pebble split into pieces, each fragment mounted into a separate silver ring. She wore the rings constantly, and her work had improved, gaining a strength and conviction previously only hinted at. She was obviously inspired. And Storrs came to realise that it really didn’t matter what had brought about this change in her work, the pebble shards or some subtle psychosomatic process. The results were what mattered. And they were startling.
Once, Storrs had searched for his own pebble, intending to subject it to a thorough analysis. Though he spent hours looking, he never found it. Perhaps that had been psychosomatic, too.
It ended as they both realised it must during a period of increasing anxiety on Iella’s part. She had become inconsolably restless and ill-at-ease, even though her work had been going well. The answer had been obvious to them both.
‘I have to go.’ She had told him simply. ‘You do understand, don’t you? I have to go.’ They had both accepted that she would be making the trip alone. The fact that Cin 2347 was classified unstable was never mentioned.
* * * *
These memories and others came flooding over Storrs with a vividness that left him aching with longing and despair. As the last traces of gas fled from the viewscreen Storrs turned away, his mind swimming with visual echoes. Standing in the half-open doorway at the back of the view-room stood Ceol. He had obviously been standing there for some time. He left before Storrs reached the door.
On his next visit to the viewroom, Storrs was appalled to discover that someone had been in during his absence. Whoever it was had been persistent. Iella’s name had been scored into the rest of the chairs.
* * * *
Before leaving for Cin 2347, Iella had presented Storrs with a self-portrait as a parting gift. She had painted it in secret and she insisted that Storrs was not to remove the wrapping until after her departure. It was undoubtedly the best piece she had ever painted, possibly a masterpiece. Every time he looked at it he experienced despair and pride in equal measure, a mingling of emotions. It was the final proof that her decision had been the right one. Now it hung on his cabin wall in the Glider.
* * * *
After the latest incident in the viewroom, Storrs had a series of strangely vivid dreams, each revolving around a specific facet of his relationship with Iella, each conjuring her presence more powerfully than the last. In those dreams Storrs relived the anguish and the exhilaration of their relationship; recollections of events he had struggled desperately to forget flashing past with the clarity of yesterday’s memories.
He woke once in the darkness of his cabin. He was covered in sweat and had obviously been crying out. His face was wet with tears. He sobbed in the darkness remembering Iella. As sleep dragged him back into his dreams he sensed that he was not alone in the room.
When he next awoke he was shivering violently. He snapped the light on, staring feverishly around the cabin. He was alone. When his eyes rested on Iella’s self-portrait he cried out in anguish. The symmetry of her features had been tortured into a distorted agony, the colours running and merging under the pressure of ill-shaped fingers.
Storrs felt a blind rage sweep over him at this violation of Iella’s portrait. It was senseless, alien. He cursed Ceol’s incomprehensible interference with his privacy. The situation, always uneasy, had now become intolerable.
* * * *
Bursting from his cabin, Storrs found Ceol crumpled into a motionless heap in the corridor. His skin had taken on a disturbing grey pallor. The only colour on his body was smeared on the tips of his fingers.
After Storrs delivered news of the alien’s collapse. Van Vliet applied medical aid to the unconscious form. Though Ceol’s body was humanoid, Storrs realised that there were vast biological differences between the alien and an Earth man. Yet Van Vliet seemed to know exactly what to do, administering drugs and checking the level of organic activity with a sureness and dexterity that indicated long practice. Storrs began to wonder where Van Vliet had accumulated such unlikely knowledge.
There was an awkward moment when Van Vliet, satisfied he could do no more until Ceol was transferred to the medical centre, asked for Storrs’ help to carry him there.
Storrs shook his head, stepping back a pace. There was no way he could explain. He just couldn’t bring himself to touch Ceol’s body. The thought was abhorrent to him. He remembered Iella’s ruined face in the painting; Ceol’s recurring intrusions on his eremetic existence; the growing suspicion that the alien’s presence aboard the Glider was other than just coincidental. Even in Van Vliet’s behaviour Storrs had begun to detect an ambiguity of purpose. ‘Ceol has to go,’ Storrs said defensively. ‘He has to leave this ship. I can stand no more of his interference.’
Van Vliet stared at him, then lifted the alien in his arms, his face flushed with effort and anger. ‘Go where?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you understand? Ceol is dying.’
* * * *
It was some days before he saw either of them again. Storrs had resumed his routine of sitting in the viewroom during his waking hours, eating and sleeping in his cabin, attempting to come to terms with his apparently futile existence.
When Storrs learned from Van Vliet that Ceol, after making a partial recovery, had locked himself in the hold containing the Quar by destroying the opening mechanism, his initial reaction was relief. He had feared further impositions; at least his solitude was assured.
However, Van Vliet’s expression suggested that his relief was premature.’
‘What exactly is Ceol doing in the hold?’
Van Vliet was evasive. ‘I suggest you determine that for yourself.’
* * * *
On the instrument deck, the nerve centre of the ship, Storrs watched one screen of the visual monitoring system. The wide angle lens of the closed-circuit camera mounted in the hold’s ceiling gave the scene a distorted surrealistic atmosphere, increasing Storrs’ unease. Ceol was working with strange cutting tools on the Quar. It was obvious even then that the subject he had chosen was Iella.
‘Why?’ Storrs asked, turning bewildered from the screen. ‘Why me—why Iella?’
‘Don’t you really understand, after all this time?’ Van Vliet sighed. ‘Iella would. Empathy and feeling. Inspiration, Storrs; inspiration!’
Storrs looked at what Ceol was doing. ‘You condone that?’
‘I am unable to judge. I am merely the instrument.’
‘And I the victim.’
‘A question of interpretation.’
From that moment Storrs’ visits to the. viewroom were abandoned. He spent as much time as possible watching Ceol on the monitoring screen, refusing to leave the set even for his meals, dragging himself away only when his inflamed eyes and tortured mind induced fantasies and aberrations.
Ceol seemed a shadow, ghastly thin, driving himself with inhuman energy, denying the weakness of his failing body as his hands moved and shaped and reformed the Quar.
Occasionally Van Vliet would come and stare at the screen, a look of tired hopelessness on his face. His concern was obvious and Van Vliet offered no explanation, made no attempt to disguise his involvement. Storrs frequently found himself deliberating about their relationship.
* * * *
At first merely apprehensive about the statue of Iella Ceol was fashioning, Storrs progressed by rapid stages to unconcealed distress. This was Iella as seen through alien eyes, through alien senses. At first glance the differences seemed slight, intangible almost, as though Ceol was reinterpreting her personality rather than her physical appearance. Yet Storrs sensed a deeper allusion. Ceol was making a statement; but unable to translate the form of that statement, Storrs experienced an impotent confusion.
Though he possessed the machinery to force an entry into the hold, Van Vliet, afraid of the possible harmful consequences to Ceol in such a confined area, refused. Storrs was growing desperate, the strain he was undergoing assuming all the symptoms of a potential nervous breakdown.
Seeking some way at least to delay the completion of the statue of Iella, Storrs managed to convince Van Vliet that it would be in Ceol’s interests if the lights in the hold were to be extinguished. Van Vliet agreed, realising that if Ceol continued working at the same compulsive intensity he would be dead within a matter of hours, that unable to see he would be forced to rest. It was a decision that suited both of them. It allowed them an extension of the inevitable, an opportunity to think.
Even then Storrs found it impossible to leave the blacked-out screen. He sat in front of the set, completely immobile for long periods, more on edge than when he had been able to watch Ceol working.
He waited for a day and a night, not knowing what was happening, until the tension reached an unendurable level. When Van Vliet had turned the lights off in the hold, Storrs had made a note of the position of the switch on the complicated instrument display. Unable to bear the uncertainty any longer, Storrs switched the lights back on.
* * * *
His unvoiced suspicions assumed reality. Ceol had finished the statue. The alien had worked on in the darkness and now his work was complete.
It was many minutes before Storrs realised that Ceol had not moved. Even in death the alien retained the ability to frighten him.
And the copy of Iella inspired fear, a subtle uncertain scratching of nerve ends, a series of fluid visual distortions always too transient to identify, never so fleeting they could be ignored. Now more acutely aware than ever of the contradictions and discords Ceol had worked into his interpretation of Iella, Storrs groped blindly for an understanding of the origin of these unnerving declensions.
He looked down at his hands then. In the uncontrollable twitchings of his fingers lay the only possible route to that answer.
* * * *
Van Vliet called him a madman but did not refuse his request. ‘There are hazards you know nothing of in handling Quar,’ he explained.
‘I must correct the errors/ Storrs insisted. ‘I must!’ The desperation in his voice could not be denied.
Van Vliet nodded. ‘Very well. There are precautions. I will instruct you as best I can.’ He recognised the impossibility of attempting to change Storrs’ mind, that there were dangers for Storrs no matter which course he took. At least let the decision be of his own making.
* * * *
The first time Storrs touched the Quar his stomach heaved. It was warm, with the feel of flesh. So real was the illusion that momentarily he could almost believe that it was Iella who stood before him. But the differences remained, grew more apparent the longer he looked. The dream shattered.
Van Vliet had instructed him on the malleability period of Quar. Hours remained, perhaps a day at the longest, before it became impossible to work the material. But old fears were not lightly overcome, the heritage of superstition still paced uneasily in the subconscious.
Oddly, once started he did not doubt his ability to resurrect the real Iella from beneath the alien mask, Ceol had been a great artist. But he had been Iella’s lover, her soul-mate. He knew her.
But he did not know Quar. And he did not know himself. He began to learn in the hours that followed.
* * * *
Quar; of vegetable origin, Van Vliet had said. It moved under his hands, twitching slightly, shivering, as though rejecting the knife. And as Storrs worked the Quar fastened to his hands, attached itself to his fingers, interfered with his control and his grip on the oddly shaped knife.
Time after time he was forced to stop to cut the Quar away, experiencing revulsion, even pain if he left the shearing away long enough. The pain was real. The Quar was growing into his skin. Blood flowed when he cut it away. If Quar had a vegetable origin it also had an affinity for flesh.
With the pain came delusions, products of a mind too long under stress; images from the id conjured by his ordeal and the evocative stimulant of the duplicate Iella. His senses fragmented. Chaos filled his mind. Added to an increasing temporal discontinuity, came a heightened symphysis of tactile and visual perceptions in a tumult of unintelligible impulses. Intellect and the critical eye surrendered to instinct and subconscious desires. The agony of his hands faded to insignificance before the assault on his mind.
When he could do no more, when violent spasms shook his body and his willpower fled, Storrs staggered blindly out of the hold screaming obscenities along the corridors of the Glider. Obeying some irrational urge he dragged his body towards the viewroom. There, before collapsing into unconsciousness, he saw on the viewscreen that the Glider was approaching an asteroid.
* * * *
The asteroid was remarkable only in that it was large enough to retain a tenuous atmosphere. Its surface was harsh, pitted with faults and crevasses and grey with long dead laval plains; with here and there indications of lichens and mosses. An uninspiring destination.
Waiting for Van Vliet, Storrs used the visual monitoring equipment to look into the hold. He stared in silence for a moment then switched it off.
The duplicate Iella was exactly as it had been before Storrs had attempted the metamorphosis. Though able to correct certain physical inaccuracies, the prime illusive imperfections remained.
A sudden suspicion, a moment of freezing doubt, entered his mind. Was Ceol’s interpretation closer to the real Iella ? Was Ceol, an alien, capable of a more accurate assessment of her character than he ? For Storrs, the implications were appalling.
* * * *
‘Why are we landing?’ he said when Van Vliet entered the instrument deck.
‘Because Ceol requested it.’
‘Ceol is dead.’
‘Am I then to ignore his wishes?’
Storrs shook his head. Confused. Then: ‘Why did he choose this place?’
‘His motives do not concern me. He had his reasons.’
‘Reasons?’ Storrs challenged. ‘What did you know of his reasons ? How could you ? Ceol was an alien!’
‘Alien?’ Van Vliet mused, studying the landscape whirling past below them. The bleakness in the rocks was reflected and intensified by the expression on his face.
* * * *
Storrs stood gasping in the thin acidic air, wondering what madness had prompted him to leave the ship. It was bitterly cold and except for a narrow band of glittering light which marked the edge of the galaxy, the sky was black. There were shadows and deeper shadows, and soul destroying silence.
Van Vliet appeared in the airlock after a time. He was carrying something. Even at that distance Storrs knew immediately what it was.
He watched as Van Vliet moved across the inclined plain away from the ship.
Iella! He had to fight down the insane conviction that it was she Van Vliet carried in his arms. The suggestion was almost too strong for him to ignore.
The cold and the bitter atmosphere, an eventually deadly combination of gasses, were draining his strength. Already sluggish motor responses were warning him of the danger of remaining much longer. He had been out on the surface over an hour now. Yet he refused to heed the warnings. The enigma of the duplicate Iella replaced all other considerations.
He looked down for a moment, resting his eyes. In the dust at his feet and embedded in the rocks were the fragments and remains of earlier life.
Van Vliet set the statue down, then began to walk back across the plain towards the Glider. If he noticed Storrs he made no sign.
* * * *
Relative to the galaxy the asteroid was spinning slowly, revolving along its own axis. Low down on its horizon a star appeared, glimmering and pulsing with unnatural rhythms, oscillating slowly from dim red to brilliant blues.
Without being told, Storrs knew the name of that Star; Cin 2347. It was the most beautiful and the most terrible star he had ever seen.
Now he realised Van Vliet’s reason for pushing the Glider towards the galaxy’s edge. They had overtaken the light explosion from Cin 2347’s nova. The destruction of that star still lay in the future here.
But what was the purpose of it all ? What was this dreadful myopia that affected his understanding ?
* * * *
Tension grew within him. The tension, the waiting and the unending silence were slowly crushing him.
The rime forming on his lips tasted like salt-blood. All the confusion and torment he had experienced since Iella’s death mounted within him. Storrs was human and fallible; and desperately afraid. The pressures inside him were unbearable.
Unable to face the answer which waited for him, Storrs ran sobbing from the shadows towards Van Vliet and the Glider.
‘Van Vliet!’ he screamed. ‘I’m coming too. Wait for me!’
The last sounds were the roars and reverberations of the Glider’s impulse jets as she lifted off.
* * * *
Later the laval plain was illuminated by a brilliant radiance erupting from low down on the asteroid’s horizon. In the glare of that dying sun could be seen the tears in Iella’s eyes.